Flytings
Arnold Rattenbury
- Collected Poems and Songs by Hamish Henderson, edited by Raymond Ross
Curly Snake, 163 pp, £9.99, March 2000, ISBN 1 902141 01 6
Old men can be buggers at hanging on. Hamish Henderson, who died last March at the age of 82, hung on firmly through three books, edited by others: his writings on ‘Song, Folk and Literature’, collected as Alias MacAlias (1992), a selected letters, The Armstrong Nose (1996) – both edited by Alec Finlay – and Collected Poems and Songs, edited by Raymond Ross. All three books reveal Henderson, by then in his seventies and eighties, as he chose to be revealed. His only other publications had been fifty years earlier: Ballads of World War Two, collected and sometimes also written by himself, in 1947, and Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica (1948). This last, honouring the soldier victims of desert war, ‘our own and the others’ as his dedication put it, ends its tenth elegy with a pledge:
Run, stumble and fall in our desert of failure,
impaled, unappeased. And inhabit that
desert
of canyon and dream – till we carry to the living
blood, fire and red flambeaux of death’s proletariat.
The iron in your arms! At last, spanning this history’s
apollyon chasm, proclaim them the reconciled.
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Letters
Vol. 25 No. 3 · 6 February 2003
From Frank Dux
Arnold Rattenbury mentions that Hamish Henderson was reported to have been appalled 'that the American singer Pete Seeger, attracted by both tune and strangeness of language, had sung his "Freedom Come All Ye" at Carnegie Hall without understanding what the words meant' (LRB, 23 January). The next paragraph quotes another 'work' of Henderson's, used in anti-apartheid campaigning, sung by packed crowds welcoming Mandela to Edinburgh:
They have sentenced the men of Rivonia
Rumbala rumbala rumba la
The comrades of Nelson Mandela
Rumbala rumbala rumba la
He is buried alive on an island
Free Mandela Free Mandela
I wasn't in Edinburgh on that occasion, but as a child in the US in the early 1940s I was present to hear Pete Seeger performing this rousing song of the International Brigade fighting in the Spanish Civil War:
Viva la Quince Brigada
Rumbala rumbala rumba la
Viva la Quince Brigada
Rumbala rumbala rumba la
Que se ha cubierta de gloria
Ay Manuela ay Manuela
It appears that Henderson was being somewhat less than charitable.
Frank Dux
Bath
From W.S. Milne
Arnold Rattenbury's quotation from Hamish Henderson beginning 'My aim is to write a long, unified, connected poem' was first published in the Edinburgh-based magazine Chapman in 1968. In that piece (which forms the preface to his partially completed poem sequence 'Freedom Becomes People') Henderson highlights what he sees as 'the murderous alienation of the poet in contemporary society'. This is one of the reasons he went to folk-song for inspiration, to connect with the people, although, as Rattenbury rightly states, this strategy was firmly grounded in a solid classical foundation. What is ironic is that this great modern Scottish poet, the author of some of the finest poems of the Second World War and of the monumental lyric 'Roch the wind in the clear day's dawin' should not be included in, for example, Robert Crawford and Mick Imlah's New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse (2000). Henderson did not wear his Marxism lightly, and neither did his compatriot Tom Scott (the editor of the previous Penguin Book of Scottish Verse), and both are penalised, it seems, by their omission from that influential anthology (it must be said that both do appear in Douglas Dunn's Faber Book of 20th-Century Scottish Poetry, 1992). This fact surely furthers Henderson's claim about the poet's 'murderous alienation', even among his own kind, though it could be said, I suppose, that 'Barred frae the company o the Pantheon' as he micht be, he'd be happy enough in the bothie or pub being sung aa nicht.
W.S. Milne
Esher, Surrey
Vol. 25 No. 4 · 20 February 2003
From Hayden Murphy
It is almost evidence of life after death to see my much missed friend Hamish Henderson causing such a fey flyting (Letters, 6 February). The 'versed and stanza' version of his initially entitled 'Free Mandela' appeared as 'Mandela' in 1974 in Broadsheet – a literary magazine I edited in Dublin from 1967 to 1978; and earlier, under the title 'Rivonia', in Sing in 1965 (it was composed after the Rivonia treason trial which sent the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe to Robben Island). It appears, with additional lines in Zulu, on Freedom Come All Ye (Claddagh Records, 1977) sung by Atté.
Henderson acknowledged in a letter in 1974 that 'the tune is the Spanish Republican song of the Civil War "Viva la Quince Brigada".'
Hayden Murphy
Edinburgh
From Ian Wall
W.S. Milne (Letters, 6 February) supposes that Hamish Henderson might be happy to be 'barred frae the company o the Pantheon' – I suspect he would too. At the same time he is joining a pantheon of sorts. In Edinburgh Park, on the west side of the city, a series of 12 busts of 20th-century Scottish poets is being erected. The first four, of Iain Crichton Smith, Hugh MacDiarmid, Liz Lochhead and Edwin Morgan, were completed last year. This year's herms have been commissioned and are expected to be erected in May and will be of Sorley MacLean, Tom Leonard, Douglas Dunn and Hamish Henderson. The final four will be commissioned in 2004. Hamish Henderson may not have wished to be in the Pantheon but I like to think that he would be pleased to be out in a park in the company of other Scottish poets.
Ian Wall
Edinburgh
Vol. 25 No. 7 · 3 April 2003
From A.J. Wade
The fifth line of the International Brigade's Spanish Civil War song quoted by Frank Dux (Letters, 6 February) should surely read: 'Que sea cubierta de gloria' ('Let it be covered in glory').
A.J. Wade
London SW6
